


A Butcher Without His Knife

by Lioneliness



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Billy Butcher Whump, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Protective Hughie Campbell, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:22:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27595439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lioneliness/pseuds/Lioneliness
Summary: Billy vs. Black Noir a la season 2 episode 5 "We gotta go now"Some Billy Butcher Whump. Could be read as gen but certainly leaving gen territory. I'll try not to spoil it.CW: this fic contains a lot of imagery and discussion of suicide. If that is not for you right now, please try something else (maybe my other fics please??)
Relationships: Billy Butcher/Hughie Campbell
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53





	A Butcher Without His Knife

**Author's Note:**

> This was a request from @zecklein on tumblr that I kind of fell in love with. I hope I went to some unexpected places with it. 
> 
> Please make note of the content warning though let's be honest, even if you shouldn't be reading this sort of stuff you're probably going be drawn to it anyway. take care of yourselves.
> 
> I do take requests for free (thats how this fic was born) and I love comments and criticism (even mean ones because im a tough bitch). As always reach out to me here or on tumblr @lioneliness-etc

No sooner had Billy Butcher shut the door behind him than a piece of charred ceiling collapsed, half blocking the way out. Soot and ash momentarily clouded the air and he coughed, turning to grab a fire poker from the floor.

“Alright you fucker, come on out now.” He spoke steadily, stepping toward the living room, which was still aflame in patches. Since he was a teenager, he had developed the ability to slide effortlessly into a rabid, combative state of mind. And now, this was it. He would go out in a primal for. He curled his tongue and began to spit curses to taunt his masked opponent.

Black Noir’s armor was smoldering as he stepped out to meet Billy. Butcher heard a knife fly before he even saw a movement and he ducked low, charging at the supe. He swung the poker. Noir blocked it effortlessly with one arm and lunged for Butcher’s throat with the other. The hand grasping his windpipe was a shock to him, but he maintained hold of the poker. He swung up, grabbing the pole with both hands before bringing it down horizontally onto Noir’s arm. The elbow buckled enough for him to wrench his neck out of his opponent’s grip.

Butcher went for a stab at Noir’s throat with the poker, but the supe dodged easily. They were in close combat now, in the center of the living room. Butcher went for a diagonal blow to the head with the iron rod. The moment he lifted his arm he knew he had made a mistake. Noir had a knife in his left hand which he thrust forward. It entered near the bottom of Butcher’s right lung before Noir drove the blade upwards. Butcher heard several things pop and crack in his ribcage. _What the fuck?_ There was no way the knife could sever bone in one stroke. _Oh,_ he realized, there was cartilage in there too, attaching his ribs to the sternum.

Somehow, he remained on his feet as the knife was wrenched out, though he suddenly felt incredibly sick. The next moment he heard the music of shattering glass. Turning, there was M.M. and Hughie jumping through the front window. Hughie was screaming something and holding a gun, but he fell silent and slack-jawed the second he Butcher, who faced him from the middle of the room with Black Noir looming behind. Billy wondered dumbly if Hughie could see the vertical line of blood quickly expanding across his chest.

“HEY! You don’t want to kill that man.” M.M. spoke calmly. Butcher could hear Noir’s breath behind his head. “We have photo evidence, something Vought does not want to go public. We know about Becca Butcher, and we know her location. Now before you do anything, you might want to go check in with your higher ups, because I can assure you they would rather have assholes like us still alive than have our associates leak that.”

Butcher wondered for a moment if M.M. had a secret PhD in bluffing, but he stayed facing the broken window, and his friends. The room stood still. Then, quick as a cat, Noir had picked something up off the floor and Hughie and M.M. watched in horror as he put the fire poker through Butcher’s chest. It emerged out the front, just below the open wound that ran up his ribs. Noir then walked calmly out the front door. At that point, Butcher’s knees gave out.

He managed to catch himself with a hand on the floor as he fell. He could see the sharp end of the poker sticking out of his abdomen and he was seeing white lights and black spots from the pain. He tried in inhale, but something was spasming inside him and even worse, there was something in his lung.

“oh shit, shit!” Hughie was kneeling next to him, holding his shoulder to keep him from slumping to the ground. Still struggling to breathe, Billy tried to look up at Hughie or at M.M. who was also standing over him.

“You need to pull it out,” he rasped, gasping.

“No, you’ll bleed out.” Hughie kept gripping his shoulder and his voice was cracking.

“I know but I can’t breathe with it… where it is.” Butcher grunted. He felt M.M’s broad hand on the back of his shoulder, steadying him. Then white, hot pain shot through him and he screamed, losing all sense of where his limbs were in the space.

Billy found himself on the floor stomach down, while Hughie tried to roll him onto his side. He looked up to see M.M. tossing aside the bloody poker.

“Okay, okay.” Was Hughie really trying to soothe him right now? “We’re going to get you to a hospital.”

“No! No hospital.” He groaned. He could feel Hughie’s hand freeze on his shoulder. He tried to look up through his blurring vision. “No more, lad. I’m done.”

“No. Fuck you, you aren’t making that call.” Billy could see Hughie looking up at M.M., who was starting to reach towards him too. In a split-second decision, Billy saw the gun Hughie had been holding earlier on the floor near him. He lunged for it in an adrenaline haze.

“I said no fucking hospital!” Butcher could barely push himself off the ground, but he forced the barrel of the gun against his temple.

M.M. and Hughie were yelling over each other but they both froze, looking at him in sheer terror.

“Butcher, put it down,” M.M.’s tone was careful and lowered.

“Don’t do this Butcher.” Hughie was white as a sheet, his hands out like a peace offering. “Come on, just give me the gun, please. Don’t do this.”

At this point, blood loss got in the way of Butcher’s gruesome negotiating. He felt himself go weak and dizzy and the gun slipped from his hand. Immediately M.M. whisked it out of his reach. Billy let himself sink to the floor. The amount of blood soaking into his jacket and pooling on the floor was dizzying. He started to cough wetly and through the pain he could see clumps of blood being spat onto the floor.

“Come on, let’s go.” He heard Hughie speaking softly, voice trembling. He felt Hughie’s hands on one side and M.M.’s on the other, pulling him up onto weak legs. He screamed as they stood, and his breathing begin to feel futile, an agonizing wheeze. They moved as quickly as they could, half dragging Butcher into the backseat of a car. Billy closed his eyes as searing pain and dizziness washed over him in waves. He heard several car doors closing and cracked open his eyes enough to see Hughie pulling off the flannel he had been wearing over his t-shirt.

“Your Aunt has Terror, she’s going to arrange to stay with a neighbor.” Hughie pressed his balled-up shirt firmly over the wounds on Butcher’s chest. He gave a strangled hiss in response.

“Don’t fuckin touch me.” He tried to push Hughie away, but arms felt like overcooked noodles. Hughie ignored him and kept applying pressure.

“He’s losing way too much blood,” Hughie said to M.M. in the driver’s seat.

“The hospital isn’t too far.”

Hughie tried not to think about how familiar it was to look down and see his own hands covered in blood. Butcher had tried fighting him off at first but his movements where becoming smaller and weaker. He pressed a blood streaked hand to Butcher’s face and his stomach tightened at how cold the skin was. He could hear his partner’s breathing getting increasingly labored, making increasingly wet sounds. Billy coughed some more, spitting more blood onto his collar. Hughie tried to keep his airway clear.

“His breathing is getting worse!”

“We’re almost there, just hang on.”  
“Butcher! Hey! Stay with us. You need to keep breathing, I know it hurts. Just keep breathing!” Hughie was screaming at him now. Billy was certain they could both feel his fluid filled lungs spasming under the pressure.

It was at this point that Billy Butcher realized that all the peace he thought he had made with this was a pathetic fucking act. He could feel the throbbing pain of each breath growing more and more desperate and for an instant he thought how he would never feel pain again. He would never come out of a fight bleeding and half drunk on adrenaline. He’d never crash a car through a storefront again, and these weren’t even particularly good things. He’d never taste whiskey again, or scratch the soft wrinkles on Terror’s head, or laze around in bed after sex. The boys would go on planning stupid missions and getting hurt and he would never again feel the rush of heading out with them. And all of this was cut off by his window of breath growing smaller and smaller. As the car rounded into the hospital parking lot, Hughie began to scream.

“FUCK! Fuck! M.M. he’s not breathing. Shit! Come on Butcher! You don’t get to do this!” Hughie was thrashing around, trying to pull the dying man down so he could start compressions. He was far past hyperventilating as he pounded furiously on Butcher’s chest.

“Shit! Ok we’re here! Let’s get him handed over the nurses!”

In a blur, they pulled up behind an ambulance at the emergency bay. Hughie could only recognize M.M. in the flurry of scrubs as Butcher was pulled away from him and transferred to a gurney. They lost sight of him in seconds.

…

“Kid, drink this.” M.M approached Hughie, handing him a paper cup of water. Hughie slumped further into plastic hospital chair and gulped down some of the water. It had been a few hours and they hadn’t heard any news on Butcher. They had retreated to a corner of the waiting room where they wouldn’t be looked at too closely. The panic had worn off leaving Hughie feeling numb and surreal. A few thoughts slowly surfaced.

“Does Butcher have money to pay for this? He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who keeps up on his insurance, and I mean, we don’t exactly have the NHS here.” Hughie said without looking at M.M.

“I have no fucking clue, but his aunt has money.”

“I guess… We have to talk about what happened back there though.”

“I know kid, we’ll see how it is when he wakes up.”

They had given fake names to the hospital staff, but they knew it wouldn’t be very long before they were discovered. It was another half hour before a doctor approached them.

The doctor explained that they had repaired damage to his liver and right kidney that was expected to heal completely at very low risk of losing any function. They had also repaired his lung and inserted a chest tube as a drainage precaution that could be removed in a day or two. It would be a long wait for the cartilage in his chest to heal, as well as for the damaged muscle to repair itself and build up strength again. The doctor stared at them long and hard before leading them to Butcher.

Billy was half awake and higher than a satellite’s orbit. Hughie could tell because his eyes were glassy, but at least he wasn’t moving around too much. A tube snaked from his side to the large electrical box that ran the drainage suction. His bed was propping him just slightly upright, and his muscles looked so slack and unlike himself that Hughie’s initial anger at him melted away.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Hughie reached out to rub Billy’s shoulder, trying not to sound too worried or too cross.

“Pretty fuckin’ terrible, high off my fuckin’ rocker though,” Billy muttered. Hughie noticed there was an oxygen mask that he had removed from his face and was trying to hide underneath his elbow.

“Put that back on, they said you need it!” Hughie gestured to the mask.

“No I don’t.”

Hughie looked to M.M. for support, who simply shrugged.

“It’s not mandatory but it can help you get big full breaths which prevents lung infection.”

“See, told ya.” Billy looked up at him and Hughie rolled his eyes.

“Butcher… you died. You weren’t breathing, and they said they had to restart your heart.”

“Well it’s beatin’ now innit.”

Hughie sighed, he was about to discuss what had gone down at the house when the doctor appeared at the door looking much more scared and upset than before.

“I have alerted the nurse on duty to phone the police. They should arrive in the hour. You are to remain in this room until they arrive, or it will affect your custody and sentencing.”

“Shit,” M.M. exclaimed as soon as the doctor had left.

“Right then, M.M., how to get this thing off?” Butcher was already removing an IV and fiddling around with the tube protruding from the side of his chest.

“What the fuck? You can’t pull that out!” Hughie hissed back.

“Well we can’t damn well get arrested.”

“That should really stay in for another day at least but it won’t function without the wall suction. I can cut the sutures holding it in.” M.M. concluded, Hughie staring at him in horror. “Hughie, I want you to get the car running and pull up directly in front of the east entrance, regardless of what parking says down there.” M.M. tossed him the keys.

Hughie took off, scrambling down the stairs and out the sliding doors of the hospital before anyone could stop him. He started the engine and pulled up in front of the doors, tapping nervously on the top of the steering wheel as he watched for his friends. As it turned out, M.M. had not constructed a particularly elaborate escape plan. A moment later, speeding out the automatic doors like a bullet, M.M. came sprinting behind a collapsible hospital wheelchair that held Butcher, still gowned up and holding his jacket and belongings on his lap. Hughie giggled for maybe the first and only time that day.

“Drive!” M.M. manhandled Butcher into the back and threw himself into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind him.

“My entire ass is hanging out of this fuckin’ thing,” Butcher was saying in the back as Hughie put the gas pedal to the floor and took them out of the hospital parking lot. 

…

Billy Butcher woke up to the scent of strawberry smoothie kid’s shampoo. He groggily tried to piece together how he had wound up here, flat on his back on Hughie’s cot in some godforsaken basement closet. Whatever good stuff the hospital had given him had worn off and every breath he took felt like a terrible mistake. He could feel the bulk of bandages around his midsection and the nauseating tug of sutures. He tried to keep his chest as still as possible with each breath and tried to rely only on his elbow to gently push himself up.

“Hey! Don’t try to get up.” Hughie was sitting on the floor, perpendicular to the cot, pulling his earbuds out as he saw Billy stir. He scrambled forward to gently push Billy back down. The lad looked like absolute shit, hair greasy and prominent dark circles under his eyes.

“What am I doing in your bed?” Butcher asked hoarsely.

“It’s easier to keep an eye on you in here. Plus, it’s better for you to be flat right now,” Hughie shrugged.

“Yeah well, fuck that,” Billy said trying to push himself up against what felt like the mass of the entire universe. Hughie grabbed his arm and slowly eased him upright.

“Take it easy, they sliced right through a lot of the muscles you need to keep yourself upright,” Hughie warned. Butcher used his arms to steady himself, his abdomen aching fiercely and his guts feeling notably detached from his internal frame. Hughie sat next to him on the cot, looking at him with big, serious eyes. “We have to talk about what happened at the house.”

“Yeah,” Billy conceded tiredly, avoiding Hughie’s gaze. “Listen mate, that was a mistake. I was in a bad way and I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, but that can’t happen again. You say it was a mistake now but it’s a mistake that could have killed you yesterday. It sort of did actually. Your fucking heart stopped! You get that right? That means no more Butcher, no more awareness, just…poof! Not existing.”

“I know that, lad. Believe me, I’ve thought it over plenty since then. I was a right cunt, now I won’t do it again.” They were silent for a moment.

“You know you’re not in any of this alone, right? All of us know what it’s like to be separated from people we love and to be hurt and lied to and to feel like there is absolutely no future out there for us. You don’t have to just… power through it all or say fuck it and die. Its ok to just be in the middle of that.”

Billy looked at Hughie, just for a second. Jesus, the lad was all big watery eyes and smiling softly like a lanky little frog. How could someone be so fucking sincere? Billy grimaced.

“You know… My brother Lenny, that’s how he went. Blew his brains out and I wasn’t even there to answer his calls. My dad’s barely even alive anymore, but he’s a rotten cunt, and it seemed like a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to ‘im, for his other son to go the same way.” He looked away quickly.

“I think there are better ways to prove him wrong,” Hughie said gently. Butcher may have been in considerable pain but suddenly felt he needed to get up and leave, fast. Standing was a bit rougher than he anticipated and he ended up just having to stay there, recollecting himself and his searing nerve endings for a moment. That gave Hughie more than enough time to stand as well and wrap his arms tightly around Butcher’s shoulders.

“The fuck you on about?” Butcher said gruffly, frozen in place. Hughie laughed, muffled into Billy’s shoulder.

“It’s a hug, asshole. You know, you’re a complete dick, but… we need you. I need you around.”

For once in his life, Billy let his head slump down onto Hughie’s shoulder and wrapped his own arms around the man’s midsection. Hughie was warm and musty and smelled like too much highly chemical men’s deodorant. Butcher didn’t care.

“Hey, Butcher?” Billy grunted in response. “Go the fuck back to bed, please.”


End file.
